So there I was, a recycled postgrad in my mid-forties. My choice of research subject evinced a wide variety of comments. Why had a Sassenach chosen to research Scottish song collectors? Why had I chosen a subject so very different from my first doctoral attempt 25 years earlier? And what did it have to do with librarianship? Could I not have done doctoral research into that?
However, my choice of subject made a lot of sense. Yes, it was triggered by my finding the Dundonian James Simpson flute manuscripts after a library refurbishment. But as it turned out, I pretty much exhausted James Simpson after publishing a paper in the RMA Research Chronicle, and my doctoral research was into 18th and 19th century song collections rather than the instrumental manuscripts that had first revived my research ambitions.
Institutionally, I had spent (by this stage) one and a half decades at a Scottish conservatoire. Not only that, but our Scottish music degree was by now an established course, and I could see that there would always be interest in early Scottish sources, both manuscript and published.
